I cooked the dinner, lit a candle in the middle of the table and asked my girlfriend to sit at other end of the table. It was 7 P.M and stars were already there in skies. I felt little bit shy as thousands of stars were looking down at the earth and I felt they were just watching us and for a moment I felt like a celebrity. I could feel the cold breeze from the mountain and could see that my girlfriend was shimmering of cold. I thought to make some fire. I lit a torch and went to the field to search for some wood, I was lucky that night that I found few dry sticks. With help of those sticks I lit a fire and soon the winter turned into summer. Now everything looked ok, the only the thing that was missing was music. For a moment I thought to sing it myself like in Hindi movies but again realized that it just will spoil the evening because there won’t be any singers backing me up and my solo performance has never been appreciated by anyone apart for me. Then I remembered that I had charged the battery of my mobile in the afternoon. So I took out my mobile and played my GF’S favorite song “You are the one I love“. She liked the whole setup; she just couldn’t believe that I could be so romantic. The candle light in chorus with stars made her tears sparkle like the diamonds.  Truly, the moment was priceless for me. After that we lost our self on our private conversation. Things were getting so romantic that we forget 3 hours had already passed in a glimpse and electricity was taking its highway to our locality. So, we left everything there and I hurried to drop my GF to her house as I had promised her mom to bring her home before the lights. Though the moment was short I couldn’t miss to thank someone who had helped me to come up with the creative idea of the dinner. Well its no other than our government who gives us the priceless 6 hours load shedding a day.
When I was a kid I was afraid of dark and always dreamt of a country without a load shedding. I still remember the times when I used to get happy when my elders used to say that after this and that hydro projects are built we will not have load shedding anymore. Now things are different, we have learned lived and have started to like the load shedding. Few years back we were worried that we wouldn’t get entertained by dark nights, busy office schedules, etc but the routine of load shedding this year has made it clear that it’s going to last for few more decades.
Well, now the light are back let me surf the internet and find some cool jokes so that I can crack them tomorrow to my colleagues at the office. Well if you are surprised by that line then let me tell you that there is load shedding in my office tomorrow (12 -3 PM).  You can’t get holidays on load shedding but you can come to office and crack jokes as you can’t do anything else while the electricity is gone. This has really strengthened the teamwork in our office and of course helped in building healthy relationships between colleagues. Thanks once again to our government for giving us 6 hours plus bonus load shedding a day. 

Note: if you still haven’t enjoyed the load shedding like me than download the load shedding routine of Pokhara and try to learn, live and like it. For other living outside Pokhara, you have to search other places for the routine.

By,
Ravi Shrestha
ravi@pokharacity.com